Let us have a sieve and shears, and thou shalt see devils. By alphitomancy, cried up by Theocritus in his Pharmaceutria. By alentomancy, mixing the flour of wheat with oatmeal. By astragalomancy, whereof I have the plots and models all at hand ready for the purpose. By tyromancy, whereof we make some proof in a great Brehemont cheese which I here keep by me. By giromancy, if thou shouldst turn round circles, thou mightest assure thyself from me that they would fall always on the wrong side. By sternomancy, which maketh nothing for thy advantage, for thou hast an ill-proportioned stomach. By libanomancy, for the which we shall need but a little frankincense. By gastromancy, which kind of ventral fatiloquency was for a long time together used in Ferrara by Lady Giacoma Rodogina, the Engastrimythian prophetess. By cephalomancy, often practised amongst the High Germans in their boiling of an ass's head upon burning coals. By ceromancy, where, by the means of wax dissolved into water, thou shalt see the figure, portrait, and lively representation of thy future wife, and of her fredin fredaliatory belly-thumping blades. By capnomancy. O the gallantest and most excellent of all secrets! By axionomancy; we want only a hatchet and a jet-stone to be laid together upon a quick fire of hot embers. O how bravely Homer was versed in the practice hereof towards Penelope's suitors! By onymancy; for that we have oil and wax. By tephromancy. Thou wilt see the ashes thus aloft dispersed exhibiting thy wife in a fine posture. By botanomancy; for the nonce I have some few leaves in reserve. By sicomancy; O divine art in fig-tree leaves! By icthiomancy, in ancient times so celebrated, and put in use by Tiresias and Polydamas, with the like certainty of event as was tried of old at the Dina-ditch within that grove consecrated to Apollo which is in the territory of the Lycians. By choiromancy; let us have a great many hogs, and thou shalt have the bladder of one of them. By cheromancy, as the bean is found in the cake at the Epiphany vigil. By anthropomancy, practised by the Roman Emperor Heliogabalus. It is somewhat irksome, but thou wilt endure it well enough, seeing thou art destinated to be a cuckold. By a sibylline stichomancy. By onomatomancy. How do they call thee? Chaw-turd, quoth Panurge. Or yet by alectryomancy. If I should here with a compass draw a round, and in looking upon thee, and considering thy lot, divide the circumference thereof into four-and-twenty equal parts, then form a several letter of the alphabet upon every one of them; and, lastly, posit a barleycorn or two upon each of these so disposed letters, I durst promise upon my faith and honesty that, if a young virgin cock be permitted to range alongst and athwart them, he should only eat the grains which are set and placed upon these letters, A. C.U.C.K.O.L.D. T.H.O.U. S.H.A.L.T.
B.E. And that as fatidically as, under the Emperor Valens, most perplexedly desirous to know the name of him who should be his successor to the empire, the cock vacticinating and alectryomantic ate up the pickles that were posited on the letters T.H.E.O.D. Or, for the more certainty, will you have a trial of your fortune by the art of aruspiciny, by augury, or by extispiciny? By turdispiciny, quoth Panurge. Or yet by the mystery of necromancy? I will, if you please, suddenly set up again and revive someone lately deceased, as Apollonius of Tyane did to Achilles, and the Pythoness in the presence of Saul; which body, so raised up and requickened, will tell us the sum of all you shall require of him: no more nor less than, at the invocation of Erictho, a certain defunct person foretold to Pompey the whole progress and issue of the fatal battle fought in the Pharsalian fields. Or, if you be afraid of the dead, as commonly all cuckolds are, I will make use of the faculty of sciomancy.
Go, get thee gone, quoth Panurge, thou frantic ass, to the devil, and be buggered, filthy Bardachio that thou art, by some Albanian, for a steeple-crowned hat. Why the devil didst not thou counsel me as well to hold an emerald or the stone of a hyaena under my tongue, or to furnish and provide myself with tongues of whoops, and hearts of green frogs, or to eat of the liver and milt of some dragon, to the end that by those means I might, at the chanting and chirping of swans and other fowls, understand the substance of my future lot and destiny, as did of old the Arabians in the country of Mesopotamia? Fifteen brace of devils seize upon the body and soul of this horned renegado, miscreant cuckold, the enchanter, witch, and sorcerer of Antichrist to all the devils of hell! Let us return towards our king. I am sure he will not be well pleased with us if he once come to get notice that we have been in the kennel of this muffled devil. I repent my being come hither. I would willingly dispense with a hundred nobles and fourteen yeomans, on condition that he who not long since did blow in the bottom of my breeches should instantly with his squirting spittle inluminate his moustaches. O Lord God now! how the villain hath besmoked me with vexation and anger, with charms and witchcraft, and with a terrible coil and stir of infernal and Tartarian devils! The devil take him! Say Amen, and let us go drink. I shall not have any appetite for my victuals, how good cheer soever I make, these two days to come,--hardly these four.
